If It Starts, It’s Going To End Sometime.

So as another year flutters into the past and a new one comes looming up on us like some sort of fruit of the loom, it allows us some moments to take stock of what has gone before and set out our desires for what is to come. It’s just part of a never ceasing cycle of beginnings and endings.

Things must end for others to begin, a popular wisdom which gives us solace and comfort in the times when something stops before you were quite ready for it to end, before you wanted it to, or before you felt your time was up. Of course the notion of the statement is true, things constantly start, new and exciting things fill the voids in our lives left by previous ends, as we move on, grow up and learn how to live. But, and yes you’ll have to forgive me for stating a sentence with but, that doesn’t ever make endings any easier. Yes of course we move on, time allows for wondrous things, but, as I’ve mentioned in previous blogs, we spend so much of our lives looking back, that the endings start to add up, and questions in our heads arise as to what path our lives might be on should that ending have not occurred so soon. For every decision we make, we cut a thousands strings, block off a thousand paths, and change a thousand courses, and we can never know what might have been on that path, and such is a frustration of life.

There are times in our lives where we are desperate for something to end, we are willing it to stop so we can get on with what we want to do…see the final part of The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy for an example. Equally there are times where you never want something to halt. Time plays tricks on us, the things that last forever are those you want to fly by, the things that zip along and constantly run away from your grasp are the ones you want to savour every second of, ones you want to burn memories into your retina, ones where you can be yourself, and be a happy soul. We learn from an early age that life is about beginnings and endings, from the end written at the back of a book, to once upon a time at the beginning, we know nothing can last forever, so why do we then spend our lives searching out foreverness? What? Yes I know that’s not a word, leave me alone will you.

I’m not searching foreverness, I’m searching for things that I desire now, for things that make my life better right now and things that will make me smile, however it leads me to question what I do as a performer. In the song, ‘Fame’, they say ‘I’m going to live forever.’ Of course their not but through fame you can live on forever. I recently saw the superb ‘Morecambe’ in the West End, a show about a comedian whose living forever in the laughter and memories of millions. You can live forever through fame. Of course I don’t do what I do for fame. I perform because if I didn’t do that I don’t know what else I’d do. I’m at my most comfortable on stage, it’s where I feel home, I do it because I love it, any fame is a slightly odd, yet rather flattering, by-product of me just doing what I do.

If you happened to see my show last year you’ll know the word THE END plays an important part in the conclusion of my show, a moment where everything starts to come together, where audiences realise that a visit to the toilet is now only seconds away, and hopefully a moment that allows what has come before it to sink into the minds of those who have seen it. It’s a moment I love, and a moment that reminds me, that not all endings are bad.

Friends tell us our lives are on the up, that this is our year, that things are going to change, that we might get what we want, that satisfaction is just a heartbeat away, but do they honestly believe it? How can they know. No one can, the only thing we can rely on is that eventually we’ll turn the page, in whatever we’re doing in life to find 6 little letters spelling out two words, two words that sometimes allow you sigh with relief that it’s over or cry with sadness that it’s done. T H E. E N D.